‘Tis the season of nail-biting, as students around the country nervously eye their mailboxes for thick letters from their colleges of choice. Via Meadia, as we usually do at this time of year, counsels less stress and more planning for the exciting times ahead.  What you do in college is much more important than what college you do […]

India’s launch of a ballistic missile said to be capable of reaching Beijing isn’t getting quite the reaction Indians sought — at least not in public.The Atlantic Wire offers quotes from official Chinese publications pouring scorn on what they call a “dwarf missile” from a “backward” country. The BBC is also picking up the story, […]

Schadenfreude alert: readers, and especially those who don’t much like the New York Times, should make sure they are not eating soup or holding hot liquids before viewing the video below. Uncontrollable gales of laughter stemming from excessive levels of schadenfreude may cause spilling and staining.New York Times staffers, like suffering proles all over the […]

Forget pink slime.Here at Via Meadia we’ve been following another meat story: the underfunded effort of scientists around the world to save the planet and feed the world by generating tasty cuts of meat from stem cells in labs. Governments aren’t helping — probably because the ag lobby doesn’t want cows made obsolete and in […]

The Russian and Chinese navies have started their first ever series of joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, China’s Xinhua news agency has announced. Referring to the maneuvers as ‘war games’, the Chinese agency said that the fleets will work on anti-submarine, anti-piracy and anti-terrorism cooperation.Joint naval exercises represent a step forward in China-Russia […]

Occasional Via Meadia readers will know that we have no love for the incoherent, unworkable global green agenda and the wasteful government programs that support it. More attentive followers will also be aware that we are concerned about the environment and support efforts to protect it, including government funding for basic research in fields that might […]

What passes for good news about healthcare costs came in recently: they grew by “only” 4 percent between February 2011 and February 2012, significantly faster than the overall rate of inflation, but less quickly than they’ve grown in the past. Health care now accounts for 18 percent of total US GDP and costs are rising […]

Alex Kicillof, a young Marxist economist and talented orator, has been the main advisor to Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez. According to sources quoted in the Financial Times, Kicillof “is the economic brains—the first economist she has listened to since Néstor Kirchner died” and is “on the left of the left.”This week Fernandez moved to nationalize the […]

China is going through serious political turmoil the likes of which haven’t been experienced in decades, and despite the government’s best efforts, the struggle over Bo Xilai offers an opportunity for outsiders to see how China really works.This piece (h/t to fellow TAI blogger and Twitter maestro Frank Fukuyama) offers an illuminating view of what’s […]

As someone who teaches humanities in an expensive private liberal arts college, I like to keep abreast of the trends in the job market for my students. This useful chart from the Chronicle of Higher Education takes US Census data and breaks out the median income for graduates depending on their major.As you might expect, […]