This is not a post, dear reader, so much as a referral.  On November 5 Tablet Magazine ran a feature the editors there asked me to prepare.  It can be accessed at tabletmagazine.com.  I foretold of this in my October 2 post, “Once Again, Jews Is News.”I sent my copy in on October 1, right […]

There’s been no shortage of news this week about energy developments in the eastern Mediterranean. But while Israel still mulls over its decision of where to pipe or ship its new bounty of natural gas, the nearby island of Cyprus is moving forward with a plan to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal. […]

Obamacare might be the newest force working against marriage. In The Atlantic, Garance Franke-Ruta reports on the subtle anti-marriage incentives in the Affordable Care Act. Franke-Ruta first caught on to the subject when an acquaintance mentioned she was getting divorced in order to maximize the subsidies she could get under the Affordable Care Act. Franke-Ruta then […]

Melting ice is exposing a bounty of oil and gas in the Arctic, and Alaska gives the US a stake in the game. Earlier this week, oil major Royal Dutch Shell submitted a plan to drill off the northwest coast of Alaska. The FT reports: The plan for multiple wells in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest […]

Democratic alarm over the fortunes of the Affordable Care Act is becoming more and more visible every day. The last sign of panic is that Hill Democrats have acquiesced to the conservative narrative about Tuesday’s Virginia governor’s race. In the fight between GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli and Democratic victor Terry McAuliffe, nearly everyone expected Cuccinelli to […]

If investors are fleeing your state, it’s probably a sign your government’s in disarray. Bloomberg reports that Illinois’s finances are so out of whack and its forecast so gloomy that investors wouldn’t be caught dead with money there: “I’d rather invest in a state that is more underfunded and making its contributions than a state that […]

With the current crop of Via Meadia interns moving on, we’re looking for the next batch of ambitious young people to help us research and write for the site. Former interns have gone on to jobs in journalism, tech startups, the State Department and the US military, and have gotten their own clips at The American Interest and at […]

The Tamar deepwater natural gas drilling platform off the coast of Ashdod is helping to usher in a new era for Israel. The Tamar field, and a larger one to the west, are soon going to make Israel a major natural gas exporter, the FT reports today, potentially bringing in a $60 billion over the […]

To appreciate the potential impact of online education, look abroad. In India, MOOCs have grown so fast that some are beginning to wonder whether they could soon become the dominant educational force there. In the FT, Karan Khemka argues that India, with its massive college-age population, considerable number of English speakers, and shortage of domestic schools, is the […]

Second generation biofuels are a potentially “green” energy source that have something else in common with solar energy: they seem perpetually to be another 10 or 20 years away from widespread commercial viability. But a new Italian plant now claims it can produce commercial quantities of the wonder fuel. The FT reports: A $150m facility that opened […]