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The Graciousness and Dignity of Richard B. Cheney
A few hours ago I said (sincerely) that a number of prominent officials who had set the stage for today's disaster in Iraq deserved respect for their silence as their successors chose among the...
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Sunday Readings on Media, Sports, and War
A harvest of items worth attention: 1) Media Decline Watch, public radio edition. Anyone who has spent time in Seattle knows the voice and sensibility of Steve Scher. He has been a long-time urbane...
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William R. Polk on American Grand Strategy for Iraq, Syria, and the Region
The diplomat and scholar William R. Polk (right) first wrote about the Middle East in The Atlantic back in 1958, in an article called "The Lesson of Iraq." Repeat after me: "The past is never dead..."...
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Stratfor on American Grand Strategy in Iraq and Ukraine
Yesterday I presented William Polk's assessment of America's strategic opportunities, and limits, in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the environs. Among other things this was a caution against continuing to...
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Reparations, from Minnesota to Mississippi
The real importance of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Reparations article, which is still attracting deserved attention, is that it is not mainly about repayment in a literal, financial sense. Instead, as I...
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How You’ll Get Organized
In the late 1970s, I was thrilled by the ability to send and receive messages through the revolutionary medium then known as “electronic mail.” At about the same time, I began to write my letters,...
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Software Notes: Solution to Info Overload and Other Eternal Challenges
The new issue (subscribe!) is out. I've just received my in-print copy, and tonight and tomorrow, en route to Colorado, I look forward to reading the 99% of the issue's contents I had heard about in...
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Smaller Towns as Talent Magnets— the Chance to Make Things Work
As we've spent time in smaller towns that are undertaking economic or cultural recoveries, my wife Deb and I have repeatedly been struck by a certain migration pattern. This is the presence, and...
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The Power of Maps, Past and Present
One of our partners in our American Futures project, along with Marketplace radio, is the Esri mapping/geographic-info company of Redlands, California. Here are two interactive maps Esri has recently...
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Raj Shaunak and the Economic Boom in Eastern Mississippi
In our previous chronicles of economic, industrial, and educational recovery in the "Golden Triangle" of eastern Mississippi, my wife Deb and I discussed the roles of Joe Max Higgins and Brenda Lathan...
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The California High-Speed Rail Debate—Kicking Things Off
A little more than a year ago, when I did an article on the successful second-act governorship of Jerry Brown, I said that among his major ambitions for the state was to create a north-south High-Speed...
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It Takes a Village—to Staff a Factory
Reinvention and resilience across the nationRead more Earlier this week, I wrote about the work that Raj Shaunak and his colleages at East Mississippi Community College, outside Columbus, had done to...
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California High-Speed Rail—the Critics' Case
Every big peacetime project that any democracy has ever undertaken has generated controversy. In retrospect, both the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 look like Heaven-sent,...
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Sunday Evening Tech Tips, en Français
The site I'm about to mention will be most appealing to you if you use Macs, and more worthwhile still if you're either able to read French or in the mood to cope with online translations. If you're...
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California High-Speed Rail No. 3—Let's Hear From the Chairman
First, a word about the roadmap for the series I have in mind here. Last week, in installment No. 1, I tried to put California’s proposed north-south high-speed rail (HSR) system in perspective, and...
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7 Ways in Which High-Speed Rail Would Help California, According to Its Chairman
This is a follow-on to the post earlier today, in an ongoing series about the most important infrastructure project in America today, the attempt under Governor Jerry Brown to build a north-south...
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Iron Dome—Savior, or Sales Job?
In its lead story this morning, the WaPo tells us that Israel's famous "Iron Dome" air defense system has been a huge technical success that has changed the realities of battle. The system, for the...
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From Inside the Iron Dome
On Wednsday I contrasted The Washington Post's front-page story about Israel's "Iron Dome" protective system—"Highly Effective Missile Defense," as the headline put it—with much more skeptical coverage...
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The Gaza Impasse, in 2 Notes
Last night I posted three reactions from people in Jerusalem to debates about the effectiveness of the "Iron Dome" air-defense system. The first, longest, and most detailed was from an American rabbi...
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The FAA's Notice Prohibiting Airline Flights Over Ukraine
Many crucial questions about the tragic/disastrous apparent shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines flight in Ukraine are still unanswerable. Who did it? Why? With what warning? Or repercussions? But at...
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