In a study college students everywhere will be trying to hide from their parents, researchers at St. Lawrence University have found that students who sign up for early classes drink less, work more and do better in school than the slug-a-beds.Daniel Devise at the Washington Post let the cat out of the bag, and says […]

This time it is India and Vietnam making new moves in the Great Game of Asian geopolitics, and the new “strategic partnership” on its doorstep isn’t making China happy. The Economist‘s Banyan column offers a useful update on the emerging pattern of Vietnamese-Indian cooperation.  India hawks hope, in Banyan’s words, that “Vietnam could be “India’s […]

News from the not-very-United Kingdom these days is that the Scottish National Party, now in full control of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, plans to press ahead for a referendum on full independence for the land of Burns.  Rejecting the idea that fiscal independence would be enough, SNP head and Scots first minister Alex Salmond […]

Kids think the darndest things.  In South Korea, they have the Unification Ministry scratching its head trying to figure out why the younger generation doesn’t want to reunify with the North.  The WaPo has the story: Younger South Koreans are increasingly second-guessing a national goal. They don’t think an eventual unification with North Korea will […]

The other day I was looking for a pair of gym shorts in Guangzhou and stopped at a sporting goods store.  I found some — with a label proudly advertising “Made in Thailand.”The Chinese are the latest to feel the effects of wage competition, and both government officials and ordinary people are worried that Chinese […]

Australia’s perilously long list of things that will try to kill you just got longer. The deadly garden slug (A.K.A. the common garden slug) is the latest addition to the lineup, joining the ranks of the jellyfish, hermit crabs, gimpie gimpie plant, platypus, cane toads, snakes, sharks, spiders, crocs, that one Steve Irwin stingray and […]

The image of the peaceful native Americans living harmoniously with nature has had a hold on the western imagination for hundreds of years.  The trouble is, it’s wrong.New analysis of a 13,000 year old mastodon bone and the arrowhead stuck in it appears to prove that the first human inhabitants of North America were not […]

A familiar national battle is heating up in New York state: the debate over tax levels on the wealthy. Like many blue states, New York is a model of income inequality and it has both large numbers of millionaires and billionaires and large, hungry public employee unions.Despite opposition from Governor Cuomo, various interest groups and […]

A story in the FT on an interesting currency fad in China’s property market touches on a much more important subject towards the end of the article: China’s young professionals and their struggle to afford a home. Soaring property prices, along with food inflation, have soured the mood of China’s young and previously politically disinterested […]

Europe has spent the better part of two years grappling with a slow-motion debt crisis, and has had alarmingly little success in doing so. Could the problem be the ineptitude and shortsightedness of continental leadership? Of course not — it must be the fault of the evil rating agencies. The FT reports: Under one of […]