In his forthcoming book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray argues that A new upper class that makes decisions affecting the lives of everyone else but increasingly doesn’t know much about how everybody else lives is vulnerable to making mistakes.…As the new upper class increasingly consists of people who were born into […]

In many respects, this year’s list of ten trends paints a chaotic picture of the next decade: exacerbating economic upheaval, religious conflict and mass proliferation of weapons hardly constitute a reassuring forecast for the coming years. Fortunately, the list will once again end on a high note; for all the hand-wringing about the obstacles to […]

Is there something wrong with the Boston-Cambridge water supply? Via Meadia has written previously about the plague of so-called “awesome” courses in the academies that nestle along the banks of the Charles. To understand the failures of our higher educational system, one need look no further than college classes on topics ranging from “Puppetry” to […]

The Obama Administration may soon come to an agreement with Philippines to station U.S. troops or naval vessels on its territory. The talks are still in the early stages, but officials from both countries have said they are inclined to strike a deal within the next few months.An agreement with Manila would come close on […]

Winston Churchill understood Gaia better than most greens.Seventy years ago, Churchill made a prediction: “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” (h/t The Guardian) Via Meadia couldn’t agree more. Not only will fake meat cut […]

Greens widely hailed President Obama’s decision to block the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, but was that move just setting up a pivot toward brown? Following his State of the Union address, the President announced plans to increase demand for natural gas by supporting infrastructure that makes use of it, as well as by […]

Francis Fukuyama’s blog continues to make waves, this time with a skillful dissection of just what has gone wrong in Hungary. Writes Frank: The problem lies entirely in how those powers are used: nobody trusts Viktor Orbán and Fideusz to use their powers responsibly, as evidenced in the way that the government rammed the constitution […]

Cuba has been searching for oil for years; improving technology means its chances are better than ever, and a new exploratory rig offers the island nation its best hope for good economic news since communism began to eat away at the island’s hopes back in the Eisenhower administration. Oil didn’t save communism in the Soviet […]

Back at the start of the decade, Via Meadia predicted that “[t]he end of the Cold War combined with the rise of Asia will introduce the world to a new kind of reality: a post-European world order.” The past year has moved the world a long way down this path. The United States spent the […]

Last month, Via Meadia reviewed a recent study about the quality of academic research and came to a disappointing conclusion: Much of the research produced by academics isn’t very good. A recent article in The Atlantic adds a new wrinkle: Not only is the quality of this research quite poor, universities are spending a fortune […]