The Korea Herald

[Meghan Daum] Farrah Fawcett’s swimsuit hits the big time

Feb 14, 2011

Surely you noticed this urgent news item over the weekend: The red swimsuit worn by Farrah Fawcett in her iconic 1976 poster has been donated to the Smithsonian’s popular culture history collection. Along for the ride were some of Fawcett’s “Charlie’s Angels” scripts, a Fawcett doll, a hairstyling kit called Farrah’s Glamour Center and, of course, the poster itself. Do such artifacts belong at t...
[William Pesek] Roubini’s next crisis is scary food for thought

Feb 14, 2011

Forget Egypt for a moment. Skip the water crisis in China. Look past angst on the streets of Bangladesh. If you want to see how extreme the effects of surging food prices are becoming, look to wealthy Japan. So big are the increases that economists are buzzing about them pushing deflationary Japan toward inflation. Yes, rising costs for commodities such as wheat, corn and coffee might do what tr...
[Peter Singer] We need more elephant mothers than tiger mothers

Feb 14, 2011

MELBOURNE ― Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the back, when one of them suddenly asked: “Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?” I was reminded of that moment last month when I read Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” which sparked more than 4,000 comments on wsj.com and over 100,00...
[Caroline Baum] Bernanke’s worst nightmare is this man’s boxes

Feb 13, 2011

Ben Bernanke arrived at his office a week ago and came face to face with his worst nightmare. Staring out at the Federal Reserve chairman from page C1 of the Feb. 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal was a photo of a man and his boxes. The man was John Anton, founder and president of Anton Sports. The boxes contained his inventory of T-shirts. Because the price was right, Anton borrowed $300,000...
English-only in the United States? Press ‘no’

Feb 13, 2011

For years it was a bogeyman for those discomfited by immigration, particularly from Mexico: The United States was evolving into two nations, only one of which would speak English. If it was ever true, which is doubtful, it isn’t now. A 2007 report by the Pew Foundation found that, though only 23 percent of Latino immigrants spoke English very well, the figure rose to 88 percent for their adult ch...
[Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz] Egypt government needs a Pharoah?

Feb 13, 2011

NEW YORK ― As Egypt’s revolution hangs in the balance, what factors are most likely to determine the outcome? While all eyes seem to be focused on the army, watching to see which way it will jump, other key questions are being overlooked. Of course, what the army does is hugely important. Splits in a military-supported authoritarian regime can create gaps between the temporary interests of the s...
[William Pesek] Mr. 210% sees M&A boom in Japan as best deflation slayer

Feb 13, 2011

Steel company mergers are a little below Timothy Geithner’s radar. Yet the U.S. Treasury secretary should think long and hard about a recent one in Japan. On the surface, Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. joining forces to become the world’s second-largest producer isn’t wildly interesting. It’s the “why” below it that’s important: Such deals are now the official policy of a ...
[Brahma Chellaney] The mystery of the Karmapa Lama

Feb 13, 2011

NEW DELHI ― The seizure by police of large sums of Chinese currency from the Indian monastery of the Karmapa Lama ― one of the most-important figures in Tibetan Buddhism ― has revived old suspicions about his continuing links with China and forced him to deny that he is an “agent of Beijing.” The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, and the Karmapa Lama are the three highest figures in Tibetan Buddhism...
[Naomi Wolf] WikiLeaks’ release of cable: A press without principles

Feb 13, 2011

NEW YORK ― Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is in the news again, this time after former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer turned over to him confidential records on roughly 2,000 wealthy individuals that Elmer claims contain evidence of money laundering and tax evasion. Elmer was quickly convicted of violating Switzerland’s bank-secrecy law, but few journalists have demanded that Assange be pro...
Competition feeding drive for healthier food

Feb 11, 2011

The broad strokes of the “2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans” report released last week are elegantly simple: Eating is and should be as pleasurable as it is necessary, but we also need to eat less, eat smarter and get more exercise. If we do, we’ll feel better and weigh less, we’ll enhance the development of our children, everybody will be less likely to get chronic, diet-related diseases su...
U.S. must reverse its image as apologist

Feb 11, 2011

While much attention focuses on how gracefully to dislodge President Hosni Mubarak from his 30-year reign, the Obama administration should be asking how U.S. policies helped him remain in office that long to begin with. The United States has grown far too comfortable with an Arab world dominated by unmovable, abusive rulers while assuming that the Arab people couldn’t be trusted with democracy. ...
[Tim Rutten] Beware Islamists in the wings

Feb 11, 2011

From the American perspective, the transition now underway in Egypt confirms John Kenneth Galbraith’s famous appraisal of politics as a choice between “the disastrous and the unpalatable.” What the Obama administration must dread is not the prospect of Cairo repeating the disaster that was Tehran in 1979 but St. Petersburg in 1917, when one revolution ― its leadership democratic but hopelessly d...
[David Ignatius] Struggle is just beginning in Egypt

Feb 11, 2011

WASHINGTON ― Wael Ghonim, the charismatic young Google executive who helped launch the protests in Tahrir Square, sounded the trumpet in a first Twitter message Thursday afternoon: “Mission accomplished. Thanks to all the brave young Egyptians.” But he soon sent another message urging protesters to wait for official news ― and when President Hosni Mubarak finally made his speech late Thursday, i...
[Editorial] New questions raised about death penalty

Feb 11, 2011

Imagine what was going through the mind of Taiwanese Air Force private Chiang Kuo-ching as he was being led to his execution in August 1997. What a horrifyingly surreal moment it must have been for the 21-year-old man to know he was about to die for a crime he did not commit. Stomachs knot and nerves shudder when we visualize the moment Chiang was escorted into the death chamber. The story broke...
[Editorial] Temple of gloom

Feb 11, 2011

ASEAN unity is again under strain as Cambodian and Thai troops keep up their animus over an 11th-century temple astride their common border. Ownership of the Preah Vihear Hindu temple had been determined in Cambodia’s favor by the International Court of Justice in a 9-3 vote half a century ago. Why the border squabble should have persisted to this day tells vividly how the emotive weight of histo...