While we here at Via Meadia have generally been bullish on the prospects of hydro-fracking, it is important to note that the technology is still in its infancy and comes with real problems in need of solutions. As the Associated Press notes: Officials said Saturday they believe the latest earthquake activity in northeast Ohio is […]

Last year at this time New York city was paralyzed by a blizzard; thankfully, I was visiting family outside the city when the snow fell and was able to hole up in my house upstate where I teach at Bard College.  There was plenty of snow up there, but up at Bard people know how […]

Iran is rolling out one defiant step after another these days.  In recent days it has begun ten days of naval games in the Straits of Hormuz while warning that it would close those straits to oil shipments if it is attacked.  It has warned Turkey that, if attacked, it will respond by attacking NATO […]

The Egyptian non-revolution continues to push liberals to the margins even as the Army and the Islamists renegotiate the boundaries between them.The latest demonstration of liberal impotence: the Egyptian government, despite strong pressure from Washington and other donors, insists on its right to supervise and watch over NGOs that receive funds from abroad.  Overwhelmingly these […]

The Mead list of the top ten things to do to get smart hasn’t changed since 2011, but it deserves reposting nonetheless. Here it is: enjoy — and let one of your New Year’s resolutions be to get smart in 2012. To those of you out there nursing your hangovers, Merry Christmas!  While most of […]

The Atlantic.com has a selection of twelve celebrity hangover cures for those of you glazing dazedly at the too-bright New Year.  Many date from the Golden Age of American Drinking, those years between the onset of Prohibition when drinking became glamorous and rebellious, and the death of the three martini lunch when increased economic competition […]

The Iowa caucuses are coming much too early this year, but it feels as if we have been waiting forever for them to actually arrive.  A barrage of excessive and pointless press coverage has drowned the country for months.  Iowa’s caucus for years was seen as the prequel to the actual presidential race which began […]

Much of my life has been spent in institutions dedicated to public policy: the State Department, the Rand Corporation and the Rand Graduate School, George Mason’s School of Public Policy, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and now Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. People in these places make policy, give advice about what […]