The new york times

If you do ever find yourself in Moscow with a spare morning or afternoon to discharge, might I recommend a visit to the Museum of Cosmonautics? Roosting below the grandly named ‘Monument to the Conquerors of Space’, the frigid, rather shabby rooms of this museum contain exhibits that are as moving as anything that’s ever been placed in a glass box for tourists to gawp at. When you consider that Soviet Cosmonauts ‘touched the face of God’ using crude, dangerous technology that contained less processing power than the average contemporary fridge – when you consider the sheer bravery of men like Gagarin, Belyayev and Komarov – the major response is (and ought to be) pride. Pride on a human level, that is to say, a species-level pride.

Cockburn still takes the Sunday edition of the New York Times. He has two cats, and all those extra sections make excellent liners for the litter tray. Perhaps this is what people mean when they say that you have to hold your nose when you read the Times. The Times may have closed the curtains on the question of Nikki Haley’s window dressings, but its writers still cannot be trusted. Is it from malice or ignorance? Or a cocktail of the two, in which the presumption of virtue overrides the responsibility to check the facts?