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About Dean Baquet Not Having a College Degree
Editor’s note: In a profile about its new executive editor, the New York Times reported that Dean Baquet does not have a college degree. Baquet dropped out of Columbia University after his sophomore year after landing a summer internship at a New Orleans newspaper that he parlayed into a full-time job. The revelation took many by surprise…
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Good Night, Moon. Good Night, Gil
Was there a touch of spring in the air? And did she have a pink dress on? … Wasn’t your first love A very precious time? It was predictable that the accolades for the late poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron focused on his political commentary and searing insight into the tenor of America’s transitional era…
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Black Auto Designers Lead the Way at GM and Chrysler
At the 2010 New York Auto Show, Ed Welburn, General Motors’ chief automobile designer, sat between his creations. On his left, glistening on a slowly moving turntable, was a silver, supercharged, 556-horsepower Cadillac CTS-V. On his right, a CTS-V station wagon that can do 150 mph. When asked why he made a family car that…
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Benjamin Hooks' Dashed GOP Dreams
It’s hard to make pancakes with your right arm broken and useless in a sling. It was 90 degrees and humid in Miami Beach, even though it was just 7:30 in the morning. Frances Hooks was struggling to fix breakfast in the kitchen of their hotel suite during the NAACP annual convention in 1980. Breakfast…
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Legally Green: Mandating a Cleaner Environment
Thirteen states from California to Rhode Island would like to impose strict emissions standards on new cars. Another 23 state legislatures would like to do away with the ubiquitous plastic grocery bags. Oregon has kicked a flame retardant out of children’s pajamas; Wisconsin has banned another compound from toys for tots. Washington is taking copper…
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Toyota’s Search for a Solution
Akio Toyoda will sit before a panel of U.S. congressmen Wednesday and try to explain why Toyota—the world’s largest automaker and a company founded by his grandfather—sold cars with runaway accelerators, erratic brakes and undependable steering systems. As Gerald Meyers sees it, the senior management of Toyota would love to do the right things for…
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Toyota and Runaway Auto Technology
The sun was high, the road was dry, and I was cruising at 75 miles per hour on I-94 and slowly gaining on the car ahead of me. I tapped on the brake pedal to cut off the cruise command and slow the car. But it did not slow down. Instead, the accelerator pedal suddenly…
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How Warren Washington Is Solving the Puzzle of Climate Change
For Warren Washington, a lifetime of researching the heavens began with a relatively simple question posed by a high school chemistry teacher: Why are egg yolks yellow? “Instead of explaining the answer,” recalled Washington, “she asked me to find out, which stimulated me. The answer lay in their diet. I looked up what chickens ate,…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
