January 2012

2012: The year that the Higgs boson is discovered

By Jim Baggott
The new year is a time for bold and often foolhardy predictions. Certainly, most of us will take the prophesy of impending doom on 21 December, 2012 with a large pinch of salt. This date may represent the end of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, but it doesn’t necessarily signal the end of all things (not even in Mayan history, contrary to popular belief). I think that when the time comes, we can plan for Christmas 2012 with a reasonably clear conscience. But, despite the obvious pitfalls, I am prepared to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I predict that this will be the year that the Higgs boson is discovered.

What is a caucus, anyway?

By Katherine Connor Martin
On January 3, America’s quadrennial race for the White House began in earnest with the Iowa caucuses. If you find yourself wondering precisely what a caucus is, you’re not alone. The Byzantine process by which the US political parties choose their presidential nominees has a jargon all its own.

Are Biblical laws about homosexuality eternal?

By Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky
One of the reviews of The Bible Now that was favorable on the whole criticized us on one point in our chapter on homosexuality. The reviewer said that we were liberals, with a liberal agenda, and that we had twisted the clear meaning of the biblical law to fulfill that agenda. Others have criticized us at times in our careers for being conservative.

Whose Tea Party is it?

By Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson
Newt Gingrich’s brief turn as presidential front-runner was only the latest paroxysm of a tumultuous Republican primary season. What’s going on? Tensions within the Tea Party help explain the volatility of the Republican primary campaign, as candidates seek to appeal to competing elements of the Tea Party with varying success.

Private schools and public benefit

By Simon Baughen
The charitable status of private schools raises strong passions, both for and against. Those in the ‘anti’ camp were heartened by the Charity Act 2006. Section 3(2) explicitly provided that there was to be no presumption that purposes in the first three headings listed in s.2(2) – education, religion, prevention and relief of poverty – were for the public benefit. The Act also required the Charity Commission to provide Guidelines on what amounted to public benefit.

In memoriam: J. Lynn Helms

J. Lynn Helms, who served as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the first years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, died on December 11, 2011. Helms played an instrumental role in breaking the 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). A former Marine Corps fighter pilot and business executive, who had little sympathy for labor unions in general and who believed that there was no place for a union organization of air traffic controllers at the FAA, he helped persuade President Ronald Reagan and top administration officials that they could weather a controllers’ strike, even if it meant firing more than two-thirds of the workforce.

Beginning one way in the New Year

By Anatoly Liberman
As promised, the first of the fifty-two posts due to appear in 2012 will be devoted to the verb begin, whose siblings have been attested in all the West Germanic languages (English is one of them) and Gothic. Surprisingly, they did not turn up in Old Scandinavian, except for Danish (under the influence of German?). Old Icelandic for “begin” was byrja, and its cognates continued into Norwegian and Swedish, let alone Modern Icelandic and Faroese. The etymology of begin has not been explained to everybody’s satisfaction, but such is the history of most etymological flesh.

Giving up smoking? Put your mind to it

By Cecilia Westbrook
Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Yet quitting smoking is a challenging endeavour – insurmountable for some. Even smokers who get the best help available still have a 50% chance of relapsing. Clearly, the more options we have to help with cessation, the better. Recent research suggests that meditation and mindfulness may be beneficial for smokers looking to extinguish the habit.

Albert Pujols, Occupy Wall Street, and the Buffett Rule

By Edward Zelinsky
As every baseball fan knows, Albert Pujols has signed a ten year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels. Pujols, a three-time MVP who has hit 445 home runs so far in his major league career, deserves every penny he is paid. The competition for Pujols demonstrated meritocracy and markets at their best.

Romney back on top

By Elvin Lim
The Republican game of musical chairs continues. One thing remains: Mitt Romney has held on to his seat as a leading contender for the nomination in the last four years.

Luther excommunicated by Catholic Church

This Day in World History
On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum pontificem (“It pleases the Roman Pontiff”), which excommunicated Martin Luther, a German theologian and monk who had been causing the Roman Catholic Church no end of trouble since 1517. With that, the Pope cast Luther out of the Catholic Church—and thereby helped spur the development of the Lutheran church and the Protestant Reformation.

On the street where Dickens lived

In this video, author and historian Ruth Richardson takes us on of the London street that inspired Oliver Twist. Just a stone’s throw away from where Charles Dickens lived as a child and a young man, Ruth Richardson explains the significance of the Cleveland Street workhouse, which was saved from demolition in 2011.

US law abolishing transatlantic slave trade takes effect

This Day in World History
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was formally, and finally, abolished. The story behind this ban begins at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when slavery lurked beneath several debates and figured in several compromises fashioned to win the support of Southern delegates for the Constitution. One such compromise was a constitutional clause preventing Congress from banning the importation of slaves from Africa for twenty years.