The dissipation and ego that were Norman Mailer’s life have now sired lesser children.

A dear friend, colleague and mentor, Harvey Sicherman, passed away on the evening of December 25 after a fairly brief illness. Times like these make me struggle yet again with the apparent impossibility of reconciling the intensity of feeling we know deep down to be real and of enormous importance with the coldness of a […]

The email’s subject line was meant to be a grabber: “Surprising results: Does the public support DNA patents?”The link was to an article in the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s December newsletter about a “new survey that points to the general public’s support for patenting DNA-based products.”Public support for patents on genes? That did sound surprising. For […]

Iraq, the newest democracy in the Middle East, has turned down an invitation to attend today’s investiture ceremony for the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. It thus keeps company with a litany of repressive governments that have declined invitations to the ceremony, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Saudi […]

Yesterday’s North Korean attack on South Korea has evidently frightened many people. That’s natural, for there is some incalculable but not trivial prospect that the fighting could escalate into a huge bloody mess. The attack, and the South Korean response, seems to have led to an emergency National Security Council meeting from which the President […]

The Iraqi political class has finally struck a deal on government formation—but what does the deal mean? To begin with, it means the Iranian project of entrenching in power incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Shiite religious parties that support him for another five years has succeeded—a project that has been in the works […]

How the world’s strangest communist regime gave way to liberty.

Israeli leftists, foreign “peace activists” and the Palestinian Authority sure know how to throw a protest.

Post-Soviet Kremlinology ponders the famous “reset.”

The rise and fall of Kevin Rudd as Aussie tragedy.