Nation, our so-called universities are in big trouble, and not just because attending one of them leaves you with more debt than the Greek government. No, we’re talking about something even more unsettling: the academic world’s obsession with Stephen Colbert...

Minneapolis-based architects Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd. breathed fresh life into the warehouse, about as big as two and a half football fields, late last year, when they repurposed it as the country’s largest single-story public library. (Alas, it’s not America’s biggest public library, despite what you might have read. That honor goes to the Library of Congress.) When a Walmart retailer moved to a larger facility down the road, the city purchased the old building and created the McAllen Public Library...

In the word “boson,” as media reports have plentifully pointed out during the past two days, is contained the surname of Satyendra Nath Bose, the Calcutta physicist who first mathematically described the class of particles to which he gave his name. As was common with Indian scientists in the early 20th century, however, his work might easily have eluded international recognition. Like the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujam, Mr. Bose was saved from obscurity by a generous and influential mentor in Europe. In Mr. Bose’s case, that mentor turned out to be one of the greatest physicists of them all: Albert Einstein...

Ryan Crocker is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan...

I do two things each week at our management meeting: Read aloud the names of colleagues, mostly military but occasionally civilian, who have given their lives in service of our country; and welcome those recently arrived to serve the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies. These volunteers leave homes, family and sometimes careers to work 16-plus hours a day, six to seven days a week, living in shipping containers. All are aware of the threats we face at the embassy and the more frequent indiscriminate fire against field positions.

An investigation by the Air Force into sexual misconduct at its basic-training operations has identified 31 women who have been victimized. Just as troubling is that only one of the women came forward to report the abuse, a startling fact that reflects the pervasive mistrust in the military’s handling of sex crimes within its ranks. It has been two decades since the Tailhook scandal first focused attention on this issue; it’s clear that much more must be done to fix a system that has allowed the mistreatment of women who serve their country...

...Since its beginning in 1970, Trudeau’s comic strip has repeatedly been groundbreaking, covering controversial issues in the news.  A screening [of 'The Invisible War"]was arranged for Trudeau and his wife Jane Pauley by their friend General Loree Sutton, who is interviewed in the film.  I was fortunate to interview Trudeau last week via email. The strips about which we spoke are below (don’t miss them).

LD: What brought you to want to write about the military in Doonesbury?

GT: I’ve written about our various military conflicts more or less continuously since Vietnam, but it was during the Gulf War that I first started studying military culture in any detail. I was invited by the commander of a tank brigade outside of Kuwait City to embed in his brigade, and it was that experience that set me on my current path...

Should a swimmer’s arms serve as paddles or propellers? That question, abstruse as it might seem, underlies a long-running controversy in swimming about the best, most efficient technique for the freestyle and the backstroke. It also prompted a new study from a group of scientists at Johns Hopkins University that, in seemingly answering the question, is likely to provoke even more debate...

Day by day, the death count in Syria climbs as headlines mark dozens of men, women and children shot and stabbed in Houla, or entire families killed in Qubeir. But beyond the numbers, scant attention is paid to the individuals who have lost their lives in what officials with the United Nations have described as a civil war...

The secret-spilling group WikiLeaks said Thursday it was in the process of publishing material from 2.4 million Syrian emails -- many of which it said came from official government accounts.

WikiLeaks' Sarah Harrison told journalists at London's Frontline Club that the emails reveal interactions between the Syrian government and Western companies, although she declined to go into much further detail.

Harrison quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying that "the material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's external opponents."...

"The officer bragged to his fellow officer friends that he had 'bagged' me. I got called up to a major's office, and he charged me with fraternization and adultery." — An active-duty Marine, speaking of her rape, in "The Invisible War"

If there is a defining theme in all of the testimony in "The Invisible War," the searing documentary film released last month about military sexual assault, it's betrayal. An estimated 19,000 rapes and sexual assaults took place in the military last year. Every one of them represents a monstrous crime made much worse by the sense of betrayal that accompanied it. That so few victims — just one in seven — report these crimes underscores the utter lack of trust that pervades military culture.

This should be deeply alarming to the armed services, which have professed a "zero-tolerance" policy for years — but have little to show for it...