Something about blogging brings out my confessional side.  Already this week I’ve confessed my shameful love for Walmart; in one of my first posts I confessed my addiction to the $5 necktie.  Now I’m overwhelmed with the urge to share a dark, dirty literary secret: that I not only read science fiction, I love it, […]

After finishing the last post on Islamophobia in Europe an unexpected association occurred to me—I thought of an earlier post in which I discussed problems with democracy in Israel. In both cases there is a tension between democratic principles and the desire to preserve an ethnic culture. Of course there are significant differences between the […]

In today’s New York Times, former President Jimmy Carter tells us that the North Korean regime is ready for a deal. Should we believe him? We don’t have to answer on the basis of mere supposition. There is some history here.On June 22, 1994, after Carter’s return from Pyongyang carrying what became known as the […]

Shifting my main base of operations from the stately Mead manor in Queens to the rustic Mead hideaway in the rolling hunt country of Duchess County involves a lot of shopping; fortunately for me there is a Walmart just a few miles away.At the risk of forfeiting any remaining elite cred I may have, let […]

If there is such a thing as Islamophobia, this summer would seem to be the season for it. In the United States the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero under the auspices of what is the most tolerant and peaceful version of Islam, has been escalated into widespread anti-Muslim hysteria by a few […]

Nine years ago this morning I came up from the subway stop at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue to hear from the breakfast cart vendor that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan.  It didn’t seem that important; I pictured a small two seater private plane crashing […]

Just how is one to study religion? The question is not new. It is at the core of the issue of methodology in the human sciences. Controversy has whirled around this issue for many years.

La rentrée is what the French call this time of year: the re-entry.  Everything comes to a stop in August; it is too hot to work, and the whole country slows down during the late summer dog days.  Then, come September, we come back from the beach, from the cabin in the woods,  or wherever […]

On August 28, 2010, The New York Times had a story about a tour for journalists of the major execution chamber in Tokyo. The tour was initiated by Keiko Chiba, the minister of justice, who is personally opposed to the death penalty. This opposition was apparently intensified last July when, as part of her official […]

Barry Gewen, who wrote an excellent essay probing the nature of war crimes in our pages several years ago, penned a thought-piece on corruption over at Lawrence Kaplan’s Entanglements the other day. People are complaining about the dreadful amount of corruption in Afghanistan, Mr. Gewen notes, but the idealistic critics don’t know what they’re talking […]