I’ve promised to write about the surveillance drone that I’ve been building over the past couple of months. I have always wanted to have my own drone that could send back a live video feed. This is partly inspired by products like the AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven, which is currently in use by the US military, […]

An inevitable question as we look at the demise of the 20th century economy is how shall we live? As the manufacturing that remains to us becomes more automated, reducing employment even as output climbs; as agriculture continues to need fewer hands; as outsourcing and technological change sweep through the knowledge guilds and the learned […]

In common usage blasphemy means words and actions which constitute an insult to God or other sacred entities. To the modern mind the term may seem obsolete, a leftover from primitive superstition. It is anything but obsolete to many people in the contemporary world.Toward the end of January two stories involving the issue of blasphemy […]

I have, to put it mildly, been somewhat astonished at the heated reaction that my blog post “Do Institutions Matter?” has provoked, culminating in a letter from the Hungarian State Secretary for Communication, Zoltán Kovács, to The American Interest complaining about my piece and contesting various points in it. I’m now one of the few […]

In Moscow this Saturday thousands of people marched against fraudulent elections and the Putin regime’s general abuse of power. This was the third such mass protest since the December 4 parliamentary elections, in which Vladimir Putin’s previously dominant United Russia party failed to get more than 50 percent of the vote despite widespread fraud in […]

The quest for a new social model has to start with economics. America could survive without growing prosperity and rising standards of living, but it would not flourish — and it would not be living up to its potential to create a better life not only for Americans but for people all over the world.  […]

Why did Russia veto the UN Security Council resolution over Syria? Vladimir Isachenkov has an AP piece that offers some background; with that piece and the vast database and computer resources here at Team Mead’s GHQ in glamorous Queens, it’s possible to explain why Russia did what it did. First point: domestic politics.  Putin is […]

My earlier blog post on Hungary’s new constitution has elicited a large and often angry response from some Hungarians, and now the Hungarian State Secretary for Communication, Zoltán Kovács, has written a critical letter to The American Interest that you can read here.   I will be responding to all of this in a few days, […]

We received the following letter from the State Secretary for Government Communication, Dr. Zoltán Kovács, on February 2nd, responding to Francis Fukuyama’s post of January 23, “Do Institutions Really Matter?“The text of the letter follows:Budapest, 2 February 2012.Dear Sir,Last week you published an article by Francis Fukuyama on your website (“Do Institutions Really Matter?” January 23, […]

Ten years after 9/11, intelligence reform is still a work in progress.