Reporter on the Holocene

Among the free newspaper racks at the Peachtree branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library is a fairly new entry titled the Epoch Times. Why would a modestly sized, 16-page broadsheet set itself the Herculean task of covering such a large unit of geologic time? And as a weekly? Why the next faunal stage alone could take several Vols. not to mention Nos. I’d go to quarterly at most, with maybe a summer movie preview.

But turns out, Epoch Times is the pro-Falun Gong, anti-communist China paper whose reporter recently heckled China’s President--Hu Jintao? He Jintao!--at the White House.

Should you pick up a copy, be sure to try the uniquely challenging English-as-a-second-language crossword puzzle filled with 2 and 3 letter answers that turn out to be abbreviations of the clue. (56 Across Clue: Calorie. Answer: CAL)