By any measure, Australia is one of the world’s most well-off countries with the cleaner politics and more freedoms than most anywhere else on earth. It has the second highest human development index, the fifth highest per capita income in the world and its economy has done exceptionally well since the crash. Despite all that, […]

If the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then the 21st century just might belong to the East. The British boarding school system is spreading throughout Asia, and fast. Centuries-old schools with alumni like Lord Byron and Winston Churchill are successfully establishing satellite campuses in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and beyond. […]

Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all! Chrismas is a tense morning wherever the Meads gather, as we jump whenever the telephone rings. There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or relations greet one another on Christmas morning, the first one who says “Christmas gift!” gets to select one of the other […]

Sometimes if you wait long enough, old fashions again become the wave of the future. According to the New York Times, falconry, usually associated with knighthood and medieval epics, may be one of the jobs of the future: At a time when many business solutions seem to come in the form of apps or other software, Airstrike […]

Thanks to ever more sophisticated robotic technology, physical commuting may one day be a thing of the past. American companies have started to make “telepresence robots” that allow employees to project themselves into company offices from anywhere around the world. The AP has more: It’s all made possible by the Beam — a mobile video-conferencing machine […]

Change is coming to higher education. NYU and other medical schools are offering shorter, cheaper courses in training, as the NY Times reports: Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time […]

There’s a lot of glee in some circles at the news that Senator Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) was arrested over the weekend, failed field sobriety tests, tested at well beyond legal levels for blood alcohol and was booked on DUI charges. Here at the stately Mead Manor, the feeling is more of a “there but for […]

India and Russia announced a multibillion dollar arms deal today, Reuters reports, a story that says a lot about the new Asian power dynamics.First, this tells us India won’t be an American patsy. Buying arms from Russia is a way among other things to assert India’s independence and to ensure that it doesn’t become too […]

[It’s Christmas Eve today and time for the oldest tradition at Via Meadia: our annual Yule Blog when we update and present our thirteen posts of Christmas running from Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night. During this holiday season in 2012-2013 we will blog on a light holiday schedule through New Year’s Day and on January […]

As we expected, Egypt’s new constitution, drafted by the Islamist-dominated government, was approved by voters yesterday, the Washington Post reports: Egyptians have approved a new constitution that will deepen the influence of Islamic law in their country, but will likely lead to further divisions after a month-long political crisis.Preliminary and unofficial results on Sunday from […]