Coordinated bomb attacks on police stations across the important northern Nigerian city of Kano have killed up to 150 people, early reports say.  But horrifying as that is, the death toll is not the worst thing about these attacks.These attacks tell us that Boko Haram is more effective and organized than previously believed, has more […]

Once upon a time, a law degree could basically guarantee a decent-paying job and a nice suburban house. But all that has changed. Now, many law schools are fast becoming credentialing degree mills — and the expensive, three year degrees don’t guarantee legal jobs. Increasingly, people with law degrees work at jobs that don’t even […]

A new front has opened in the quasi-war between Iran and the West. Reuters reports from Tehran: Iran’s morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday.As the West imposes the toughest ever sanctions […]

In January 2010, Via Meadia suggested that traditional structures of authority will everywhere be stressed; without embracing (and indeed while rejecting) the ideals of western democratic liberalism, people around the world will be ‘small d’ democrats who insist on a greater say in what matters to them.In the light of the Arab Spring, I’d say […]

Remember when people used to refer to a “Kodak moment”? That phrase, like the company it refers to, might be about to go the way of the dodo. According to the NYT, Kodak is having trouble even pretending that it has a future: “a lawyer representing Kodak creditors questioned management’s plan to borrow $950 million […]

Beijing has been blanketed by a particularly thick haze of smog this week. Chinese officials call it “fog,” and citizens complain that the US Embassy does a better job monitoring pollution than the government.Beijing’s leadership at last responded this week, and the Washington Post has the story: In a rare bow to public pressure, the […]

Since the recession began, New Yorkers (most notably Mayor Bloomberg) have touted their city as an example for the rest of the country to follow, citing a quick rebound from the financial crash of 2008 and respectable job growth while the rest of the country was still mired in the depths of the recession. Indeed, […]

TAI’s tech wizard and associate publisher Damir Marusic spent three years of his childhood in North Korea.  Perhaps inspired by that experience, he has a great essay on the SOPA and PIPA bills currently being considered in Congress. But even if some sort of overreaching bill is inevitable, the fight against it is not futile. […]

Washington’s war on the Colombian cocaine industry has been largely successful, but successful only in pushing drug cartels into neighboring Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Coca farms and cocaine-producing facilities have simply jumped national borders to safer havens. Anti-American governments in Bolivia and Venezuela, in particular, use the cocaine industry to thumb their noses at the […]

If you are a student with an iPad, you might not need a backpack anymore. According to the WSJ, that’s the way that Apple wants things to be, and Apple is pretty good at getting what it wants. This week, the company that changed the music industry unveiled a plan to get into the electronic […]