One defense people make for big government is that it serves as a counterweight to big business.  Unfortunately, the last tax-payer bailout of the automobile and bank industries gives little support to that argument.  What’s more, recent revelations in Luke Harding’s new book, T

Writer Evgeny Morozov has given thought to the way collecting personal data on the internet has changed marketing strategies.  Based on our web searches, we consumers are targeted with messages that encourage us to spend more and more. (“The Mall,” by Evgeny Morozov, The New Repu

The other day at the mall, I was buying postage stamps from the same woman who’s been behind the counter of the little shop for years.  The place is usually busy so we’ve never stopped to chat, but on that day, she and I were alone.  As I handed her the money for my purchase

I have long been an admirer of the cold war’s great strategist, George Frost Kennan (See blog 1/4/2012).  He was the mastermind behind the policy of Russian containment after World War II and among the first to see that the atomic bomb had irrevocably changed the politics of war. 

Recently, the sultan of Brunei  decreed that the country will return to the harshest form of Islamic Sharia law, a ruling to be imposed upon Christians and Buddhists alike who make up 30% of the country’s population.  Besides jailing and flogging, limb amputations will be imposed

Today I’m uncertain about whether or not I’ve done a good thing or a bad thing.  A friend has completed his second novel and I have encouraged him to send it out to publishers.  His first book was self-published and he seemed happy enough with that launch, so who am I to interfe

Twenty years ago, after a 100 days of slaughter, Rwanda’s ethnic war left the country in ruins.  So many men had been killed that women made up 70% of the population.   The boys who grew up during the struggle watched as their mothers faced enormous hardships to feed their famili

It’s been 25 years since Salman Rushdie published his novel Satanic Verses and Iran’s head of state, the Ayatollah Khomeini, responded by charging him with blasphemy and placing a death sentence upon his head. Not surprisingly, Rushdie went into hiding when he heard the news.  Th

When Senator Diane Feinstein expressed her outrage at Edward Snowden because he’d failed to take his concern about the NSA through the proper channels and reached out to the press,  she was guilty of short term memory loss. In 2001, William Binney, a 30 year-old veteran of the agen

Edward Snowden’s revelations about our government’s indiscriminate spying has rekindled the debate about research and ethics.  Tom Leinster, a mathematician who teaches at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland challenges the opinions of some of his colleagues when they insist t