It’s called ken-kan—from the Japanese characters meaning “to hate” and “Republic of Korea”—and it’s spreading. For 11 straight days this month, the front page of a national tabloid was splashed with ken-kan stories: “South Korea blasts into 20-year-long economic panic,” “South Korea’s President Park accelerates tyrannical rule.” Why? It sells newspapers. It resonates with under-30 editors at […]

Americans define personal success in different ways, but certainly no one strives for mediocrity. Maybe this is why Tyler Cowen’s latest book is getting people angry.

The situation in Syria today, now occupying the top slot on the international agenda, is about more than just the U.S.-Russia political compromise on chemical weapons. It is also about the interethnic and sectarian tensions driving Syria’s civil war. These tensions are echoing well beyond Syria itself, into the countries of the Greater Caucasus region, […]

We are all caught up in the quickening whirl of technological change. As consumers we recognize that accelerating technology has had many benefits, such as quicker access to information, goods, and family and friends. Yet this change can also create many new social problems—from an aging population to employees displaced by machines to new kinds […]

Larry Summers wrote a smart column in the FT this past weekend, arguing that the debt ceiling deadlock in Washington and its attendant wrangling over minutiae like medical device taxes may very well go down in history as a minor event. The debt itself, he argues, shouldn’t be keeping us up at night: it’s a […]

The murder of a 25 year-old Russian national last Thursday led to a violent riot in Moscow on Sunday. After a media outlet reported that the suspect in the murder was of “non-Slavic appearance”, Muscovites gathered to protest, attacking a vegetable warehouse that employs large numbers of illegal migrant workers, most of them Muslims from […]

Some of the environmental movement’s smarter members are ditching the knee-jerk, emotionally-wrought strategy to bash fracking as an evil phenomenon. The shale energy debate is extremely polarized, its middle ground deserted, but some notable “fracktivists” are crossing the green picket line. The AP reports: In one northeastern Pennsylvania village that became a global flashpoint in […]

In addition to his Le Monde interview, WRM also give at a talk at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales on the future of US power and US leadership when he was in France. And this one is in English! A taste: The US has come to the end of the road in some ways in the Middle […]

America’s nuclear industry isn’t healthy. Thanks to the rise of cheap shale energy, four nuclear plants have closed so far this year. Older reactors can’t compete with today’s energy market conditions, but a new generation of nuclear technology promises to breathe new life into the industry. NuScale Power has plans to shrink containment vessels down to […]

College applicants should may notice their financial aid packets getting a bit thinner this year. The Wall Street Journal reports that a number of colleges are cutting both tuition and financial aid in an effort to attract cost-sensitive students and break their dependence on financial aid and scholarships. Effectively, these colleges are gambling that they can […]