Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can’t trust you on women’s health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she’s just a good Catholic girl.

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let’s be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing.

In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act’s sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don’t believe in contraception?

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Catholic contraception controversy.]

Sotomayor’s […]

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I had a brief phone interview December 29 with Robert (Bob) W. George II, CEO of Brillouin Energy Corporation of Berkeley, California, who is one of the leading players in the LENR sector, colloquially referred to as “cold fusion”.

As we have been informed previously, they have a system under test at SRI International (Stanford Research Institute), which testing is being spearheaded by Dr. Michael McKubre, one of the most well-respected scientists in the sector. The HHT (hydrogen hot tube) being tested there is capable of producing high heat in the range of 600ºC, which is ample for electricity generating scenarios.

But the development that Bob said is “the most significant event” they’ve had, and which I could be the first to announce, is that just before Christmas, they signed a multi-million dollar licensing contract with a firm in South Korea, with $750,000 up front, half of which has already been wired, the other half of which is due within 90 days.

This contract came after a year of the firm performing their due diligence.

Bob said that they are entertaining inquiries from other nations for similar licenses.

He hopes that by the end of 2014 they will be ready for roll-out of manufacturing, handing […]

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London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, drew criticism late last year for saying that economic inequality can be attributed, in part, to IQ. ‘I am afraid that [the] violent economic centrifuge [of competition] is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability,” he told an audience at the Centre for Policy Studies.

That’s a satisfying worldview for someone who is successful and considers himself unusually bright. But a quick look at the data shows the limitations of raw smarts and stick-to-itiveness as an explanation for inequality. The income distribution in the United States provides a good example. In 2012 the top 0.01 percent of households earned an average of $10.25 million, while the mean household income for the country overall was $51,000. Are top earners 200 times as smart as the rest of the field? Doubtful. Do they have the capacity to work 200 times more hours in the week? Even more doubtful. Many forces out of their control, including sheer luck, are at play.

But say you’re in that top 0.01 percent-or even the top 50 percent. Would you want to admit happenstance as a benefactor? Wouldn’t you rather believe that you earned your wealth, that you […]

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If there is any government or non-government authority in the world that is addressing the disaster at Fukushima openly, directly, honestly, and effectively, it’s not apparent to the outside observer what entity that might be.

There is instead an apparent global conspiracy of authorities of all sorts to deny to the public reliably accurate, comprehensible, independently verifiable (where possible), and comprehensive information about not only the condition of the Fukushima power plant itself and its surrounding communities, but about the unceasing, uncontrolled release of radioactive debris into the air and water, creating a constantly increasing risk of growing harm to the global community.

While the risk may still be miniscule in most places, the range of risk rises to lethal in Fukushima itself. With the radioactive waste of four nuclear reactors (three of them in meltdown) under uncertain control for almost three years now, the risk of lethal exposure is very real for plant workers, and may decrease with distance from the plant, but may be calculable for anyone on the planet. No one seems to know. No one seems to have done the calculation. No one with access to the necessary information (assuming it exists) seems to want to do the […]

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BOSTON – During the 1988 presidential campaign, Vice President George Bush famously shined a spotlight on the ‘open sewer” that was Boston Harbor. He blamed his opponent, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, for failing to clean it up and called the harbor, which was choked with sludge and contaminated with chemicals, the dirtiest body of water in the country.

Today the harbor is the pride of Boston, a playground for pleasure boaters and even swimmers as it glistens like a necklace, ringed by glassy towers, upscale restaurants and pricey hotels.

The transformation of the harbor from embarrassment to showcase is emblematic of the larger transformation of the city over the last quarter-century.

For most of that time, one man, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, 71, has been at the helm. Although he had nothing to do with the harbor cleanup, which was ordered by the courts, he maximized its potential by encouraging nearby development. Over the two decades of his tenure, the city’s progress became intertwined with his. He was an incrementalist who, with prodding and cunning and by exercising total control, nonetheless took advantage of national trends like the back-to-city migration and helped propel Boston forward.

He leaves office on Monday having […]

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