The BBC has an interesting story about a World War II summit meeting that tells us a bit about how the world has changed, and also, perhaps, about how it hasn’t.
The story took place in 1942, when Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, traveled to Moscow for a summit meeting with Joseph Stalin, the dictator who led the Soviet Union. The two countries were new allies, brought together by their common foe, Nazi Germany.
The initial meetings between the leaders didn’t exactly go smoothly. Churchill requested another meeting, which began at 7 p.m. At 1 a.m. an under-secretary of the British Foreign Office was invited to join the proceedings and found Stalin, Churchill, and Russian Foreign Secretary Molotov sitting around the shredded remains of a suckling pig on a table covered with countless bottles of liquor. By that time Churchill was just drinking wine and complaining of a headache, and Stalin made the bureaucrat drink a concoction that was “pretty savage.” The meeting continued until 3 a.m., when the Brits stumbled back to their rooms, packed, and headed to the airport.
The drinking party was unconventional — although not unusual for the Soviets, whose reputation for long, vodka-saturated banquets continued for decades — but it did the trick. Churchill and Stalin established a personal connection that helped the allies steer their way to victory over the Axis powers.
It’s hard to imagine our modern political leaders having drinking bouts and making bleary-eyed policy decisions at 2 a.m. after guzzling countless shots of booze. We obviously wouldn’t want them to do so. But the importance of making a personal connection remains as true today as it was 70 years ago during the dark days of a global war. Summit meetings still make sense because we want our leaders to be able to take the measure of each other and establish relationships that can stand the stress when times get tough.
During yesterday’s testimony, 
The WJC wants to spotlight the rise of anti-Semitism in eastern Europe. And sure enough, the presence of the WJC caused the anti-Semites to come crawling out of their holes, spewing their hateful rhetoric. The Chairman of the Jobbik Party — which sounds like a Tolkien character but is the third-largest party in Hungary — accused Israelis of trying to buy the country, and another Jobbik member of Parliament said his country had become “subjugated to Zionism” and was the target of “colonization” by Israel. The ugly speeches and slanderous scapegoating are chillingly familiar and profoundly disturbing.
It turns out that Iceland, in addition to having the most affirmatively unappealing country name in the world, has an issue with inadvertent incest. It is a small, isolated, sparsely populated land where the residents have lived for thousands of years. As a result, the forces of nature dictate that most of the 330,000 citizens share some common ancestry. But what if you want to make absolutely certain that you avoid consorting with someone with uncomfortably close degrees of sanguinity? Fortunately, Google is offering an Android app that allows Icelanders to use their smart phones to access the Book of Icelander — an ancestry log that includes some 720,000 names — to determine their exact relations with that attractive person they met at work.
Annette Funicello, on the other hand, was not a significant historical figure. Instead, 
This week 
It’s much bigger than a normal tarantula. The 
Then we received the bill above, demanding a balance due of . . . one cent. One cent! I’m blaming the exchange rate again, because the bottom of the bill says, under “amount paid,” “Canadian funds.” Of course, there is no way I can write a check on my American bank for one cent, Canadian. The letter specifically says that I can’t send cash. And if you think I’m going to risk giving my credit card information, on-line, to bureaucrats who are trying to chase down people who have paid, in full, twice already, you’ve got another think coming. So, my only choice is to write a check for 5 cents, American, and hope that it accounts for the exchange rate and is finally accepted as payment in full by the ETR collectors.
Curiosity drove over a Martian rock and broke it open, exposing a dazzling white exterior. The striking ivory color indicates the presence of hydrated minerals in the rock. As any person who walks around with a water bottle knows, “hydration” requires water, and hydrated minerals are those that are formed when water is found. Curiosity also has detected clay-type minerals in a different rock — another clue suggesting the presence of water at some point. These discoveries are part of a growing body of evidence that running water once existed on this part of the surface of Mars.
A Dutch researcher tried to determine if there are patterns to the generation of malicious email used in spam, phishing, and other fraudulent scams. It was a huge task, because there are more than 42,000 internet service providers worldwide. The researcher found, surprisingly, that 
That was the scene along the Huangpu — now pronounced Huang-Pee-YEW! — River in Shanghai. With improbable precision, 
I mean, look at these things! Just look at them! Multi-hued, horizontal-striped pantaloons, leggings, and tunics. Huge shirtsleeve cuffs and ruffled, lacy collars that look like they belong in a Rembrandt painting. Steel conquistador-style helmets with their sharply curved, pointed brims, burnished to a gleaming pewter glow and topped with bright red ostrich feathers. And they carry pikes for weaponry. Pikes!
The general believes Chavez said those words because he loved Venezuela, but some people are contrasting Chavez’s swaggering, strongman image with the last words and suggesting that Chavez really wasn’t so courageous after all.
