— Editorial Reader

Via The New York Times

The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.

In 1997, we started a large-scale study of newly arrived immigrants, ages 9 to 14, in 20 public middle and high schools in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and the San Francisco Bay Area. Our participants came from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean; many fled not only poverty but also strife, in countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Haiti. Over five years, we interviewed more than 400 students, as well as their siblings, parents and teachers. We gathered academic records, test scores and measures of psychological well-being.

The two brothers accused in the Boston bombings — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed on Friday, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, who was captured later that day — were around 15 and 8, respectively, when they immigrated. Both attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin, that city’s only public high school. They were not part of our study, but they fit the demographic profile of the subjects of our research: birth to families displaced by war or strife, multiple-stage (including back-and-forth) migration, language difficulties and entry into harsh urban environments where gangs and crime are temptations.

When asked “what do you like most about being here?” an 11-year-old Haitian boy in Cambridge told us, “There is less killing here.” His response was notably succinct, but not unique.

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Via The New York Times

China’s leaders have tried honoring Ai Weiwei and bribing him with the offer of high positions. They have tried jailing him, fining him and clubbing him so brutally that he needed emergency brain surgery. In desperation, they have even begged him to behave — and nothing works.

What is the Politburo to do with a superstar artist with a vast global audience like Ai (whose name is pronounced EYE Way-way), who makes a video of himself dancing “Gangnam style” with handcuffs — parodying the Chinese state — that quickly ends up with more than one million views on YouTube?

How should the Central Committee of the Communist Party react when Ai releases a nude self-portrait with a stuffed animal as a fig leaf? The caption was “grass-mud-horse in the center” — a homonym in Chinese for a vulgar curse against the Communist Party’s central leadership. Or, more precisely, against its mother.

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Via The New York Times

My mornings in my home in Beijing always follow the same routine. Wake up. Make coffee. Check Air Quality Index online. Feel faintly depressed.

The AQI is tweeted by the U.S. embassy hourly. The rating ranges from “good” to “hazardous” to off the charts, and it determines my day: whether I bike or take public transport to work, whether I go for a run outside, and in the summer, whether I eat dinner in my balmy courtyard or huddle indoors with the windows shut and the air filter on.

It is a relief, then, to be back in London for the holidays; here, rain, not pollution, dominates small talk. I joke that driving into Beijing on a bad day is like entering the Gates of Mordor. England’s endlessly shifting tableaux of clouds, by contrast, seem sublime.

But that’s only if you forget that London was also once renowned for its “pea soupers” or “killer fog.” For decades during industrialization, Britain’s politicians ignored concerns over pollution in the name of economic progress. Only when a disaster struck and thousands died did the government clean up its act.

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Via Businessweek

Would everyone take a deep breath?

I cannot report on the watermelon margarita, as I failed and did not get to it. I succeeded in sipping the jalapeño margarita and then testing a basic Guy margarita. Neither tasted of radiator fluid and/or formaldehyde.

I say this by way of introducing my glorious 87 minutes at the above Times Square emporium. (And it’s an emporium as well as a restaurant.)

The above two rants, and I do mean rants, signal only the complete and total cluelessness of presumed adults. I have it on very good advice that Stein and Wells are total class acts. So why the angst over basic American food, served basic to basic Americans visiting the tourist mecca of America?

What is this, the Hamptons?

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Via The NY Times

MANY baby boomers and their children still believe the folklore of the 1960s and ’70s that marijuana can’t be addictive, because it’s just an herb. But several decades of research clearly show that what we believed 40 years ago is wrong. Marijuana addiction is common.

About 9 percent of people who smoke marijuana even once become addicted to it, and that figure approximately doubles when people begin using the drug as adolescents.

To prevent addiction from spreading, Washington voters should not legalize marijuana and reject Initiative 502 on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Marijuana addiction statistics are similar to the percentage of people who become alcoholics. Rates of marijuana dependence rise to 20 to 30 percent when people use it at least five times, and 35 to 40 percent for those who use marijuana daily. Marijuana dependence is the most common type of drug dependence in the United States, besides alcohol and tobacco.

[Full article here]

From The New York Times

Where ever the actual Municipal Battle raged, faith prospered, especially within the Southern. Faith set the building blocks where The southern area of nationalism had been constructed, single individuals through various skills as well as courses as well as supplied the religious reason behind the actual yeoman player in order to battle inside a battle powered through the concern associated with captivity. One of many causes of the actual battle enduring so long as this do, probably the most crucial, and many frequently ignored, may be the part this specific make of belief performed within the thoughts from the typical jewellry.

This kind of spiritual fervor is actually obvious through the characters as well as diaries associated with typical troops as well as chaplains as well, that talk about their own belief, their own living within because caused by the actual may associated with Lord, the actual holy character from the Confederate battle, their own complete reliance on Lord, as well as their own guarantee which Lord might provide total triumph in order to their selected, The southern area of individuals. Troops indicated a variety of causes of going after the actual battle work — the standard idea of The southern area of recognition as well as responsibility which needed someone to protect one’s house, loved ones as well as home through intrusion, in addition to a powerful perception within person independence as well as condition sovereignty — however they regularly exposed spiritual styles like a main inspiration.