I suppose that producing a blog makes little sense unless it provides an opportunity to vent personal complaints about the universe and peeves concerning the behavior of people. My list of complaints about the universe gets longer every morning after perusal of The New York Times. I also have a number of very idiosyncratic peeves […]

A study by a group led by one Dr. Darrell Francis of Britain’s National Heart and Lung Institute recently made headlines with its recommendation that fast-food joints hand out cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins to any patron who wants them, free of charge. Popping a statin with one’s Whopper and shake, the study’s authors claim, […]

“The GWOT is dead, long live the COFKATGWOT,” Walter Russell Mead likes to joke. It’s spot-on damning, really—a hamfisted rebranding could not change the essence of two wars well underway as President Obama took the reins of power. It was an early PR mistake by an Administration eager to distance itself from its predecessor, a […]

The unremitting spate of bad news from Pakistan continues; rains are still drenching the highlands and the devastation continues to spread down the river valleys.  This year’s harvest has been ruined; increasingly, it seems unlikely that farmers will be able to plant fall crops.  While visiting Pakistan earlier this month, I posted on the roots […]

We know that Christianity has been growing remarkably in recent decades—in China there is talk of “Christianity fever”. We don’t know just how many Christians there are in China at present. The reason for this is simple. Christian churches in China come in two groups: those that are registered and officially recognized by the government, […]

As the midterm elections approach, the political topic on everyone’s tongue is jobs. The discussion in the popular press, such as it is, takes several forms. Lately, the most common question one hears is how come the economy in general seems to be recovering from the recession but the unemployment rate is still so stubbornly […]

After two weeks in Pakistan and a week’s vacation I am hoping to return tomorrow to the stately Mead manor in glamorous Queens.  A bit sunburned and blistered from some tough scuba duty here in the Cayman Islands, I expect to resume regular posts on Via Meadia this week.  Many thanks to Professor Cristol and […]

I am nearing the end of a week’s rest and recuperation at an undisclosed location in the Cayman Islands, but Pakistan’s Summer from Hell is still going strong.Things were tough enough during my stay.  On my way in from the airport in Karachi, traffic was unusually light.  Roving gangs of armed thugs were roaming through […]

Over the last few years there was published a flurry of books marketed and discussed under the heading of “The New Atheism”.  The best-known authors are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.  While differing in emphasis and style, their books have in common an aggressive, indeed vituperative hostility to religion in all its forms (though […]

On July 13 the lower house of the French parliament banned all forms of headgear that hide the face, with the rationale that such garments are “contrary to the values of the French Republic”. One politician put it more poetically:  “The Republic has an open face”.  It was probably not an accident that this law […]