Sean Penn, it seems, has a grudge against Great Britain. He also doesn’t think highly of imperialism. The Hollywood star, two-time Oscar winner (and a great actor, in our opinion) for some reason has decided to wade into the political tussle over the Falklands. Here’s Penn in his own words: The world today is not […]

President Obama’s strategic “pivot” towards Asia and the Pacific Rim has led to perhaps the greatest foreign policy success of his administration to date. Over the course of one week, Obama solidified relationships with nations around China’s periphery while China, outmaneuvered, was forced to turn the other cheek. Since November China has remained generally courteous […]

Earlier this week I was in Washington, teaching a class and attending some events connected to the visit of China’s vice president.  It was an instructive time; in meetings with U.S. officials, with experts who follow China closely, and at the “state lunch” when Vice President Xi was the guest of honor at a State […]

Gallup has a very interesting poll out this week that charts Americans’ perceptions of foreign countries. The top three favorites? Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. The Anglosphere still rules the roost when it comes to Americans’ attitudes toward the world.Other results of this Gallup poll are worth noting. Israel comes in at 71 percent favorability, […]

The Himalayan glaciers aren’t melting, at least for the moment, says a recently study published in Nature. Between 2003 and 2010 the effective change in the size of glaciers in the high mountains of Asia was “not significantly different from zero,” said a British scientist not involved with the study, who added, “I believe this data is the most reliable […]

The Venerable Mead was born in Florence, South Carolina on this day in 1930.  Herbert Hoover was in the White House, economic recovery was “just around the corner”, and some of his father’s medical patients still payed their bills by leaving sacks of pecans and other local products on the back porch. After a long […]

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is the darling of aid NGOs, the Iron Lady of Liberia, an “uncompromising woman” and a champion fighter of corruption. So the recent appointment of her son as chief of the national oil company shouldn’t cause concern, right? Sirleaf is above nepotism. The development NGOs are behind her, and they know best.To be […]

In case you missed it earlier this week, AI Chairman Francis Fukuyama has built a drone and has documented the process on his blog. Here’s his take on why he did it: It is extremely easy to build a drone now that can do not just surveillance but can carry rather large payloads . . . I […]

As Venezuela’s presidential election season heats up, the Chavez administration is cranking up its attacks on any and all possible threats to its continued rule.Given that an impressive three million voters participated in the opposition Democratic Unity Panel’s primary (which selected Henrique Capriles as its standard bearer), Chavez and company are sparing no lines of […]

The past few years have seen waves of new ideas in education reform: charter schools, new methods of teacher training, new testing, and merit pay, to name a few. Activists line up behind their preferred solutions, and then politicians from Barack Obama to Bobby Jindal jump on one or more of these bandwagons. But the […]