Cars Land Opens June 15 The finish line is just around the corner! As part of the grand reopening of Disney California Adventure Park, Cars Land is set to peel out of the gate on June 15, 2012. The residents of Radiator Springs can't wait to welcome you to their home town! Get ready to be floored by the big — really big — Cars Land, coming to the heart of Disney California Adventure Park this summer! Feel like you've cruised into the real-life town of Radiator Springs. Here, Lightning McQueen, Mater and other popular Characters from the Disney·Pixar movie Cars are "revved up" to welcome you and your family. From Character meet-and-greets to all-new attractions, entertainment, dining and shopping spots, there is something for ... Continue reading →
From left, Nancy, Van, and Michael Wolff in 1958. On the way to visit my mother one recent rainy afternoon, I stopped in, after quite some constant prodding, to see my insurance salesman. He was pressing his efforts to sell me a long-term-care policy with a pitch about how much I’d save if I bought it now, before the rates were set to precipitously rise. For $5,000 per year, I’d receive, when I needed it, a daily sum to cover my future nursing costs. With an annual inflation adjustment of 5 percent, I could get in my dotage (or the people caring for me would get) as much as $900 a day. My mother carries such a policy, and it pays, in 2012 dollars, $180 ... Continue reading →
Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation Wednesday to adopt a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a major victory to clean-water advocates who sought to reduce the amount of trash clogging landfills, the region’s waterways and the ocean. Egged on by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and an array of environmental groups, the City Council voted 13 to 1 to phase out plastic bags over the next 12 months at an estimated 7,500 stores. Councilman Bernard Parks cast the lone no vote. "Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who has focused on efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River. Council members quietly backed away from a more controversial plan to also ... Continue reading →
Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a preliminary estimate of the dose received by the public as a result of last March’s meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. Nature has seen a draft of the final report, and it is mostly good news—the doses are very low, and very few cancers would be expected as a result. Most residents of Fukushima prefecture received between 1-10 millisieverts (mSv) in the first year after the accident, according to the estimate. Those in neighbouring prefectures received between 0.1-10 mSv and the rest of Japan received between 0.1-1 mSv. These levels are well below the government’s maximum recommended dose of 20 mSv, and will cause a minimal increase in cancer risk. The obvious question is ... Continue reading →
The date most associated with Harvard is 1636. It was on Oct. 28 of that year that the Massachusetts Bay Colony created the first institution of higher learning in the English New World. The gathering of immigrant Puritans described the school’s nearly imaginary creation in “New Englands First Fruits,” a 1643 publicity tract composed for the colony’s London backers. The new College, a “first flower in their wilderness,” was intended to prevent “an illiterate ministry,” the authors wrote, “when our present ministers shall lie in dust.” So why not call 1639 the most significant date? It was on March 13 of that year that the “Colledg at Newetowne,” 8 months old, was renamed Harvard. Just six months before, John Harvard, a Cambridge-educated minister living in ... Continue reading →
