Ann Althouse listens to Glenn Reynolds interview Camille Paglia about her disappointment with President Obama’s first term and nods along vigorously to the points being made: You don’t want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people’s lives like this. The controlling force in Obamacare is the IRS! Okay? This flies in the face of what […]

A new liberal think tank is opening in Berlin. That is, it’s “liberal” in the European sense, which is to say mildly conservative in U.S. terms.“Open Europe Berlin” will cooperate with the original Open Europe Institute in London, an invaluable source of analysis, commentary and alternative ideas for the world’s largest (and by far most […]

Any possible intervention in Mali is weeks away, Xan Rice reports for the FT. Moreover, it is uncertain at this point who exactly would do the “intervening”, whether those forces will be prepared to face the jihadis, and what the situation on the ground in Mali really is. Under the French proposal, the European Union […]

Sandy’s devastating flood surge is the worst disaster in the 108 year history of the New York subway system, and it now looks as if much if not all of the system will be closed for the rest of the week and possibly longer.We can hope that it will take another 108 years till something […]

While the lights went out across Manhattan tonight, and the city that calls itself the capital of the world was cut off from the mainland as flood waters thundered through its streets, many people around the world watched the spectacle and were reminded just how fragile the busy world we humans build around us really […]

The NYT has a long and interesting piece on the rise of part-time work in retail: While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers, employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of […]

The taxi industry hasn’t changed much since the invention of the automobile, but that’s not for lack of interest in new ideas. As anyone can tell you who has tried to take a cab to glamorous Queens, there is plenty of room for improvement. Fortunately the past few years have seen the emergence a number […]

Scientists at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center have made an important breakthrough: they’ve figured out how to use carbon nanotubes as a replacement for silicon in making the tiny transistors that are the building blocks of modern microchips. The New York Times Bits Blog explains why this matters: The I.B.M. advance is significant, scientists said, because the […]

AP: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday sought Algeria’s assistance for any future military intervention in Mali, pressing North Africa’s most stable nation to provide intelligence — if not boots on the ground — to help rout the al-Qaida-linked militants across its southern border.Clinton, on the first stop of a five-day trip overseas, […]

Last week, we reported that the Methodist Church was facing a heated debate over the tenure rules for senior pastors. Faced with a declining membership base, the church was forced to choose between keeping senior pastors on staff as promised or ousting underperforming pastors in favor of fresh young blood, a classic blue model dilemma that has […]