Whe IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer made its debut on Jeopardy last year, few realized that it would mark the beginning of a sea change in the American workforce. Shortly after its debut Watson computers became available for diagnosing patients, and last Month IBM announced that Watson computers would begin a foray into the banking sector as […]

Most Americans would like the Afghan war to come to an end and, especially, want our soldiers to come home. That’s not what Russsia’s President Putin, thinks, however. Speaking to the Duma, Putin announced his support for the ISAF mission: “We understand what is happening in Afghanistan – right?” Russia’s educator-in-chief lectured the Duma. “We […]

The highest number of tweets over a three-month period come from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt. These countries also show the highest number of tweets per citizen. Each is a former British colony which continues to have strong ties to the wider English speaking world.Former French colonies are far behind in tweets per person […]

With a civil war raging late last year, the do-gooder NGO crowd was aggressively pushing independence for South Sudan as a solution to the violence raging across Sudan. So far, it doesn’t seem to be working out very well. After nearly a year of minor skirmishes and tribal conflict, the sides appear closer to war […]

Before he became the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren carved out an impressive career as a historian, teaching at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown, and penning two critically acclaimed works of Middle East scholarship, Six Days of War and Power, Faith and Fantasy. His essay, “Israel’s Resilient Democracy,” recently published in Foreign Policy, […]

Solar’s bad year continues as yet another solar company’s ambitious projects prove unprofitable. Fledgling solar provider BrightSource Energy canceled an IPO at the last minute, admitting that it couldn’t find buyers at the expected price. And BrightSource is not alone in its stock woes—the New York Times reports that leading companies like First Solar and […]

As austerity bites, European politics is turning nasty, fast. The smart, cosmopolitan, enlightened Brussels elite and the well-groomed, well-bred moderate national political leaders have completely trashed Europe. The people are angry. Unfortunately, Europeans in the past have made incredibly stupid decisions when they are angry: Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler… the list goes on.Take Greece. “Greek society at […]

For me, this is peak opera time in New York. Last Monday night I saw Verdi’s wonderful MacBeth, sandwiched between a Saturday performance of Rheingold and last night’s beautifully sung and acted Valkyrie. I’m halfway through the first cycle of the Met’s new production of the Ring, with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung still to come. Between […]

Via Meadia isn’t an economic forecasting site; if I knew what the world economy was going to be doing tomorrow I would be too busy making zillions by trading exotic financial instruments the rest of you bozos know nothing about to share my secret insights with the rest of you. (Indeed, one useful thing to […]

Michael Madigan is a Democrat and serves as Speaker of the House in the Illinois state legislature. He is also horrified about the state’s mind-blowing shortfall of $80 billion needed for the state’s retirement system to pay all its obligations.Madigan thinks the best solution would be an amendment to the Illinois constitution that would require […]