The inadequacy of the political and economic leadership in the advanced world is truly staggering.  Japan is observing twenty years of failure to repair the damage of its bubble economy by failing to cope with the aftermath of the spring tsunami.  The European Union is still struggling to respond to the Greek financial meltdown as […]

The rapid pace of technological advances has become something of a cliche in recent years. Sometimes, it helps to look at one of the few exceptions to appreciate just how sweeping these changes are. The Atlantic profiles the TI-83 — graphing calculator of choice for high schoolers everywhere — which has scarcely changed at all […]

The lines in the supermarkets are long in the glamorous borough of Queens; many of my neighbors in Jackson Heights come from tropical countries where hurricanes are a familiar threat.  As the news from Irene changes hour by hour, we now appear to be in for an extremely annoying event rather than a mass disaster.  […]

There are two serious errors on the Martin Luther King, Jr memorial. Not one, two.  In separate articles the Washington Post gets into the controversy: An error has been etched in marble on the grand Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that was to be dedicated Sunday…“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends […]

Violent rumblings along the Kurdish fault line are giving Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan nothing but a headache and a bundle of bad options. The tenuous truce between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds – a vital one for Iraq’s stability – has been jeopardized this past month by two lethal attacks on Turkish policemen and soldiers. As […]

Meet Tammie Pearls, recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China, linguist, traveler, blogger, and a former contestant on China’s most popular dating game show. The Wall Street Journal  has a piece on her experience in China: On the first day, the show’s chain-smoking director laid down the law. He told us not to […]

Chicago has long been one of the major hubs for Black culture – Chicago blues, Richard Wright, and – yes – Barack Obama are all products of the Windy City. Recently, however, the wind has been blowing Blacks away from the shores of Lake Michigan towards greener pastures in the South and into the suburbs. […]

Team Mead is keeping a worried eye on religious violence in Nigeria, where the radical Islamic group Boko Haram has been stepping up its summer rampage. The Economist reports a trend of intensifying violence in the mostly Muslim North as the idiosyncratic and virulently intolerant group terrorizes Christians and moderate Muslims alike in its quest […]

In a piece on the proposed oil sands pipeline project from Canada to Texas, the center-left Talking Points Memo picks up on an important point but doesn’t quite drive it home: “Canadians can do what they want with their oil in Canada, and there’s little American protesters can do to stop them,” notes the post.Correct.  […]

Japan’s dull, unpopular and ineffective prime minister Naoto Kan announced his resignation today after a disappointing and short term.  An equally unpopular, ineffective and dull replacement will shortly be named.